[Haskell-cafe] Overlapping instances: are functions and typeclass methods treated differently?

[David Feuer]

That's not the same, because you show what's under the wrapper, rather than
the wrapped value.

On Mon, Oct 12, 2020, 8:28 PM norc foobar <norc.foobar at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Daniel,
>
> The constraint on an instance declaration is, perhaps counterintuitively,
> discharged at the usage site rather than the definition site.
>
> foo :: Show a => Wrapper a -> String
> foo (Wrapper a) = show a
>
> will produce the aforementioned diagnostic.
>
> ---
> Victor
>
> On Fri, Oct 9, 2020 at 2:51 PM Daniel Díaz <diaz.carrete at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Oct 8, 2020 at 2:12 PM Henning Thielemann <
>> lemming at henning-thielemann.de> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, 8 Oct 2020, Daniel Díaz wrote:
>>>
>>> > But now consider this instance:
>>> >
>>> > > newtype Wrapper a = Wrapper (Maybe a)
>>> > > instance Show a => Show (Wrapper a) where
>>> > >   show (Wrapper x) = show x
>>> >
>>> > This compiles just fine, despite—to my mind—suffering from the exact
>>> same problem that the "foo" function had.
>>> > Why does it work?
>>>
>>> There is an instance Show (Maybe a) in Prelude, but no instance Show
>>> (Wrapper a), so no overlapping.
>>
>>
>> Sorry, I wasn't very clear there.
>>
>> The problem is not with the "Show (Wrapper a)" instance itself, but with
>> its implementation of "show". It depends (just as the function "foo" did)
>> on "Show (Maybe a)", for which there are overlapping instances.
>>
>> And yet "foo" compiles without problem, while the typeclass method
>> doesn't.
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Haskell-Cafe mailing list
>> To (un)subscribe, modify options or view archives go to:
>> http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
>> Only members subscribed via the mailman list are allowed to post.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Haskell-Cafe mailing list
> To (un)subscribe, modify options or view archives go to:
> http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
> Only members subscribed via the mailman list are allowed to post.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/attachments/20201012/85300ca7/attachment.html>